Sarah's cake

I tried my piping set today for the first time on another birthday cake. This cake is for little Sarah living across the road who will turn 13 tomorrow. She lost her Mum to breast cancer in June this year. This is her first birthday without her Mum. She's taking the cake to school tommrrow to share it with friends.



A good friend of Mother-in-law's was told last Friday that she had cancer. She has breast scan every year because of a strong family history, both her Mum and sister had breast cancer (her sister had the lump in her breast removed over 20 years ago and you could say she survied cancer). It was lucky that the lump was detected early due to regular scans so no chemo is required. Hopefully once the lump is removed (the lump was so small that no one can feel it), she will be alright!

[41 weeks] Standing

Lara only started crawling 3 weeks ago, and now she's standing!





She started standing on her knees or pushing herself up on the floor or a box (such as the above) over a week ago and very soon she advanced to standing holding onto my knees or the couch or the coffee table or her toys. She's able to stand more frequently and for much longer. She's still practicing getting back down though. Sometimes that bottom just plonked onto the floor which must cost some discomfort. Other times, Lara managed a smooth and careful landing.



Lara is also getting more 'intelligent. Example one - We used to put her high chair or just an ordinary chair between the opening from our lounge to the kitchen so she can't get inside the kitchen. Now she can crawl under the high chair or chair to get to the kitchen. Why are kids so interested in things they can't have and places they are not allowed to go?

Example two - Lara resistes being put to bed at night. Before, she whinged when I laid her on the bed to put her bag suit on (that was the first sign to her that she was going to bed). Now, as soon as I take her to her bedroom, she starts to whinge. She now recognises 'that' to be the first 'go-to-bed' sign. Very soon, she'll probably start to whinge when I let Daddy kiss her good night before walking into her bedroom.

Bag suits

Lara has 3 bag suits with varying thickness she uses for sleeping. Thanks to these bag suits, she can roll all over the bed at night and still has the warmth of these clothes to keep her away from the night chill.

Husband remarked how Lara in her bag suits reminded him of the youngest member of the Simpsons household - Maggie Simpsons. We sometimes keep Lara in her bag a little longer after the first feed in the morning or the last feed at night. When Lara crawls in them, She looks like a moving rag!

Hand in the way

It's getting harder and harder to take photos of Lara.

Lara has a deep curiosity for cameras (or anything you don't want her to have). As soon as she spots you holding one, she runs over (crawls very very fast) and grabs the camera off you so she can study it and then suck it.

Half of the photos I took recently were blurred because of her constant movement. And half of the rest of the photos had body parts (mostly hands) in the way. My developing photography skills are being seriously challenged! What will we do without digital camera!

Japanese lunch

Photo: Ichiban Boshi Japanese noodle shop (Town Hall).

We went to see our financial advisor last Friday. We made the mistake of going into the city by train. It was so noisy on the train that Lara didn't get much sleep, and woke up a little grumpy. We managed a very quick lunch before our appointment. We basically ordered the first thing we saw on the menu without studying it.

I had Karaage Ramen (deep fried chicken with noodles) and Husband had Katsu curry (chicken) with miso soup. I was pleasantly surprised by their noodles. It tasted home-made and cooked al dente and just right. I heard good things about this place before and wanted to go many times, but each time was deterred by the long queue waiting outside. Husband thought it was OK but he had nicer Katsu somewhere else. I will definitely go back for the noodles.

To check out the menu and see nice pictures of their dishes click here.


Photo:Karaage Ramen


Photo: Katsu Curry

Nick's birthday cake

We celebrated Nick's birthday on the weekend. Mother-in-law gave me a Women's Weekly cake book with over 20 chocolate cake recipes among other types of cakes. I wanted to try different recipes, but didn't really need the calories that come with it. Volunteering to make a birthday cake seemed to be a great idea. Here's the final product!

The birthday cake had a layer of cream and icing in the middle. Some parts of the cake were a little dry and Husband though it was not sweet enough -the recipe has two layers of icing/cream, I only put in one layer, probably a good idea to stick to the recipe? Other than that, it wasn’t too bad. As you can see here, my icing effort needs some improvement. After hearing about my make-do plastic bag piping tube, Sister-in-law gave me a piping set she had but never used.

The piping set is a serious-looking tool that includes all types of nuzzles. We shall find out later what my next cake looks like!

Luxury weekday lunch

I caught up with a friend for lunch a couple of days ago at this tiny sandwich place in a little ally next to the Establishment Hotel near The Rocks. I don't know the name of the place, but most people work at that end of town know this place well. Their huge sandwiches (they are very very big in size) with very fresh ingredients are very popular and there's normally a long queue after 12. Their sandwiches are one of the best ones I have ever had.

At $13.50, it was not a cheap weekday lunch, but it was worth every cent!

This was my roasted vegetable salad with whole meal bread.

[9 months] Growing fast

Lara's crawling everywhere now! She's attempting and doing new things every day, it's hard to keep up! Because she is very mobile, but has no concept of danger, Lara knocks her head a lot. She laughs, chuckles, babbles, cries and screams, showing a spectrum of emotions . It's like she's testing out the different sounds she is able to make...

Generally, Lara's still a happy girl most of the time. She learned how to scream this week to get more attention (sign). She also cried more in the last couple of weeks, most of the time when she fell over or knocked her head on the side of the chair, the side of the table etc, the sort of things you would expect with a crawling baby. She dislikes being forced to stay on the change mat or lying down to have clean clothes put on and sometimes she whinges and cries in protest. So far the crying does not last long and we try to ignore it if she's just whinging.

Other things to note this month:

• Stills put everything in her mouth. Show annoyance if you don't let her do it.


• Almost ate a cricket one morning.


• Vomited out some food after she ate the edge of some newspaper while we were not looking.


• Also ate the corner of one of her board books


• Likes her board books, will sit and flip through them for a long time


• Likes to play pull-my-own-socks-off game. Looked pleased with herself after she pulled both socks off but frustrated when she couldn't do it.


• Good eyesight. Able to see the smallest dust on the floor.


• When she sees something new, she's off, crawling on top of toys, books, towels- nothing is in her way.


• 'Tries' to sing with music


• Babbles are more word-like.


• Still no teeth although the 2 bottom teeth have been visible for a few days and threatened to come out but decided not to at the end.

Dinner yesterday

This was Lara's dinner. The dark cubes at the top are beetroot with apple. The light ones at the bottom are lentils with carrot and sweet potato.


This was our dinner. Pork chops, mushrooms with onions, broccoli and fried potatoes. It was a lot more appetising, not just visually, than Lara's dinner.

We've been warned about beetroot, it was quite messy. Food was everywhere- not only on Lara's face, it got to her hair too. I won't mention what (colour) came out of the other end....

[July-Sep 2007] Books I read

Here is where I record some of the books I read in the last 3 months.

I devoured parenting books at the moment for obvious reasons. I don't read them from cover to cover but flip through them and only read the parts that are interesting or applicable at the time. Parenting skills are not always intuitive to me so I'm glad that these books help even if I only take one useful advice from a book. One book I read recently reminded us to give Lara a drink of water with food. It made perfect sense but we never thought about it before and Lara really appreciated the drink of fluid with her meshed food.

I also like to flip through food magazines. I don't know why but they help me to relax. I'm into dessert books if you have not noticed. I'm reading cake decorating books when I can get my hands on them.

Other books I've read:

The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
Easy read. Simple story and it made me think about how and why things happened the way they did and how they worked out in the scheme of life. I liked 'Tuesday with Morrie' by the same author, and that book is not a fiction. This book, though fictional is sort of a "self-discovery" book in that it seems to contain life lessons and it makes you think. A friend said she thought I read a lot of self-help books. I have not thought about it like that. I think I like to read non-fictions these days. I feel sometimes that I don't have time (or can't be bothered) reading 'unreal' stories when there are so many true stories around. Of course this could also have something to do with my choices of fiction books-they are just not interesting enough.

The Orchard Thieves by Elizabeth Jolley
A small fictional book so it didn't take long to read. It took me a little time to get used to the author's writing styles, but once the initial unfamiliarity was overcome, the book read like a beautiful lyrics. This book is about family discord and how problems seem to be resolved by themselves at the end with imagination and acceptance. It depicts simple home lives and the idle thoughts that exist, and sometimes run undeservedly wild in our heads. I didn't expect much from this book, it was just something that caught my eyes on the library shelves. It was surprisingly enjoyable.

Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott
A journal of a single Mum on her son's first year of life. The author is a devoted Christian and every time she had challenges in her life, she would pray for her next 'operating instructions' thus the name of the book I guess. It would be really good to get an instruction manual on parenting, that would make things so much easier.
A funny but sad book. I probably wouldn't appreciate this book had I read it before Lara was born. I have more sympathy for the author after my own parenting experiences. I enjoy reading stories of other parents and babies. It brought big smiles to my lips when I read about baby Sam in the book doing fake coughs and examined his Mom's teeth, because Lara did exactly the same things. It's funny that babies all seem to be doing similar things even though they are not taught to do so. I'm glad to find, from reading this book, that new parents tend to think their babies are the cleverest and the most beautiful thing alive, so I'm not the only one! I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

[38 weeks] Crawling

Lara crawled FORWARD a few days ago!! People tell us our life will never be the same again! She crawled to pick up the smallest dust on the floor- it's hard to just leave her for a few seconds now.

For a while, she looked like she was able to go forward physically and she did co-ordinate her legs and arms enough to move forward a couple of steps. However, she stopped herself half way because she didn't think she could do it. (*there's a lesson here for us adults*) Then she made many tiny, not-confident steps forward, but still she didn't realise what she could do. Her steps are bigger and more confident each day. I think she starts to believe that she can go forward!

Lara crawled forward to touch Zebadee. Lara loves Zebadee!







The other major development this week is that Lara actually initiates game-playing.

We played games like peek-a-boo since Lara was a baby. I use anything from books, cushions to towels. Every time I leave the room to do something, I would poke my head out from the corner and play a few peek-a-boo before I leave. Now Lara pulls her dress or a towel over her face for a few seconds and drops it down then chuckles with delight when we say the word 'peek-a-boo'.

She also loves the 'shake' game'. When we say 'shake', she would move her arms and hands up and down. And if she's holding a toy, she would shake the toy. Clever girl!

Pool mania

I went swimming this morning. It's school holiday at the moment so the pool was filled with kids. Kids splashing, jumping into water (despite the sign says not to do so), playing really loud, they looked like they were enjoying themselves.

The water in the pool was a funny murky colour with little bits floating around. This pool was not normally like this so I guess it was simply the effect of too many people. I can see just over 1 meter ahead, so it didn't feel very nice. The biggest problem was those kids just couldn't keep to their own play area and there didn't seem to be any adult supervisions. The kids kept coming to the "lap swim only" lanes. I didn't like it but thought I should learn to "share" the pool so I went on swimming without saying anything. The pool guy came over a couple of times and told the kids to stay in their own area but that didn't help.

I learned from a kid's birthday party and a wedding we went to a while ago that it's not a good idea to try to be kids' best friends because they would end up jumping on your head if you let them. It's nice to be friendly, but it's good to be firm with them if need to be. (I'm referring to a function/party situation where you don't really know the kids, not the situation where you are in a home environment or if you know the kids well). It's alright if there are only a few kids, I can handle that, but when they come in great numbers, it can be quite frightening. That was why I was not smiling at any kid that came to my swimming lane as not to encourage them. The lady swam in the "lap only" lane next to me was probably more friendly, and as a result the kids seemed to be less reluctant to move out of the way.

I did my 20 laps and left quickly. I normally feel energised but relaxed when I leave the pool, however today I felt quite stressed afterwards. I can't wait for school holiday to be OVER!

My first dress

Lara: "This is my first dress. Mummy says if I wear a dress, then people won't think I'm a boy."

"Do you want to see a trick?"
"I can go from a happy baby to a cry baby in just 5 seconds?"
"Look here I go"